


Break The Frozen Heart

by Quixa



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Hints of Elsanna, I Will Go Down With This Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:26:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixa/pseuds/Quixa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hans has the beautiful snow queen in chains and entirely at his mercy after the fight at the ice palace. Let's just say that his darker nature is revealed to Elsa somewhat before Anna learns of his real intentions for Arendelle. This will be an alternate (read: more mature)  take on the scenes from Elsa's imprisonment on to the act of true love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Someone Figured Out Why You Always Wore Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> This is for mature audiences, so please be mindful of the tags, and wary of potential triggers. It is in no way my intention to cause anyone discomfort!

It took a long time for Elsa to come back to her senses. There was a ringing in both of her ears at first, and a throbbing ache behind the left one was making it hard to organize her thoughts. She felt a rough fabric against her face, and though the thin blanket offered very little in the way of comfort, she had to fight not to curl into it and slip back into sleep. Instead, she focused on waking up her drowsy mind and blocking out the pain in her head.

Where was she, anyway? The last thing she remembered was the ice palace, and the great shuddering of her icy chandelier as it smashed into the ground. Why had it fallen, again..? She saw an arrow in her mind’s eye, but things were still so very fuzzy…

Hesitantly, the young queen opened her eyes and sat up, discovering a few other aches and pains on her side as she rose. Her eyes slowly adjusted to her dimly-lit surroundings, and a heavy door swam into focus beneath a barred grate. She noted with confused anxiety that the door had no handle before turning to glance at the back of the cell. A narrow, secured window revealed the frigid gray light outside. In a disorienting flash of memory, Elsa remembered Anna telling her that she had set off an eternal winter in Arendelle.  With a gulp, the queen rose quickly to her feet and took two shaky steps toward it before a pair of heavy manacles brought her up short, pulling a low groan from her lips at the pressure of the thick iron closed too tightly on her wrists.

She examined them a moment. Though she had had very little involvement with the running of the city’s prisons, she had enough experience to know that these were not the restraints used on Arendelle’s prisoners. Rather than encircling her wrists alone, these were more like iron gloves that completely encased her clenched hands, and a short length of chain allowed her very limited movement about the prison cell. Her nails dug uncomfortably into her palms when she tried to move her fingers, and she could not access her powers. The physically and magically restraining cuffs were like nothing she’d ever seen before, and had certainly been commissioned of the palace blacksmith particularly to bind her. She felt a small pang of betrayal at the thought. The friendly smith had worked at the palace since before she was born, and in the years before her powers got out of control, he would often pass the princesses lemon sweets when he encountered them around the grounds.

_One thing at a time, Elsa,_ she thought, and clamped down on her rising bitterness and anxiety. She turned back to the window, angling her body with the cuffs so that she could see the view over her shoulder. Her heart sank at the sight. The fjord, what her father used to call the lifeblood of Arendelle, was completely iced over. Great ships were protruding from the ice at precarious angles, held by waves that had frozen through, and frozen _quickly_. Sails had been ripped from their moorings by the frigid winds, and clung frozen solid to top yards hung with icicles. In the distance, Elsa could see the roofs of Arendelle, and the towers of the palace, hunched beneath more snow than she had ever seen.

“What have I done..?” she whispered to the empty room. Perhaps she _deserved_ to be locked in here…

A deep creaking announced the arrival of someone into her cell, and she gasped, whirling around to meet her jailor. Elsa was slightly surprised to see the prince from the Southern Isles setting a lantern on a low table near the exit. He locked the door behind him, then turned to face her. What was his name again? Hans? Elsa wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be on her side. He had, after all, stayed the hand of the man who had tried to shoot her in her palace on the North Mountain.

But someone had put her in these chains, so she was still wary. She drew herself to her full height. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked in the most entitled, _royal_ voice that she could manage.

He approached her slowly, shivering slightly in the chill of the cell and fixing her with an intense stare.

“I couldn’t just let them kill you.”

“But I’m a danger to Arendelle,” she argued. She was trying to use the voice she’d seen her mother use when dealing with diplomats with unknown motivations. But some of her anxiety was creeping into her voice. “Get Anna.”

“Anna has not returned.” Hans’s breath left his lips in wisps of steam, and his eyes continued to bore into hers. Elsa felt a tendril of fear. What was keeping her sister in this weather? She’d left the ice castle so long ago… Or had she? How long had the queen been unconscious after the attack? Elsa was beginning to feel discomfited by Hans’s stare, and so she turned back to the window and said nothing.

“If you would just stop the winter,” he continued, drawing closer to her still form. His eyes felt too close, his voice too sugary sweet. “Bring back summer. Please.” Another wisp of his breath, this time unfurling uncomfortably close to Elsa’s throat.

“Don’t you see? I can’t…” Hans paused, and his eyes left hers at last. Elsa had the distinct impression that he was thinking very quickly about his next move. She had to encourage it to be in Arendelle’s favor. She had to leave. “You have to tell them to let me go.” There was a note of pleading in her voice that she had not intended.

After a brief hesitation, Hans seemed to reach a decision. His green eyes slid back to her face, and this time the sweetness of his expression was gone. Instead, they became dark and predatory, and a delicate sneer graced his lips. Elsa took an unconscious step back, a movement he followed with a sort of frightening hunger. She had reached the end of the length of chain permitted by her manacles, so she tried to side-step away from him, but Hans noticed her movement. He deftly caught the chain in his left hand and dragged her closer to him. Elsa’s eyes widened in shock and fear.

“Well, then,” he murmured, holding fast to the chain as Elsa tried to wrench herself free. He held it behind himself, forcing Elsa into a lower position against this chest. “I find there is no further reason to play nicely with you, your majesty.”

And with that, his lips crashed against hers while his free hand curled roughly around the base of her neck to ensure her cooperation.

It might have been minutes or hours that Elsa struggled desperately against his crushing hold, but with her hands restrained behind his back, she had little hope of overpowering him. Sensing the direction of her thoughts, Hans's free hand trailed with infuriating nonchalance across her hip, coming to rest insolently on her backside. She gasped and tried to twist away, and he used the opportunity to force his tongue into her mouth. She shrieked in shock and disgust at the violation of it, and tried to bring her elbow down into his groin. Princess she may have been, but she was absolutely taught how to disable a man in case the need ever presented itself.

Before she could make contact, Hans whirled the chain around her, effectively spinning her backwards into his hold. He chuckled darkly against her throat, and the sensation sent goosebumps over her flesh. “Ah ah ah, your majesty.” He placed a hot kiss on the column of her neck and she shuddered. “You will touch me only how, and only when, I order you to.”

He looped the chain around his left hand and lowered it to pin her arms across her belly; meanwhile, his right hand continued to ghost across her thigh, quickly finding the slit in her gown and sliding across the cold, pale flesh beneath.

“Wh—what do you want?” Her façade of a queenly voice was all but demolished by that roaming hand, and by the heavy pants falling against her clavicle. He sucked her right earlobe into his mouth and she felt the rumble of pleasure in his chest when she flinched.

“I would think that would be fairly obvious, Elsa.” For emphasis, he pulled her more firmly against his body, and she cringed when she felt a telltale firmness against her lower back. She vaguely remembered Gerda, her governess, instructing her in the ways of physical love when she had reached the appropriate age. _This will happen when your partner loves you,_ she’d said. A frantic part of Elsa’s mind had a second to regret Gerda’s romanticizing of the process before Hans swept her up and tossed her onto the thin mattress on which she’d woken.

“That’s better, isn’t it, sweetheart?” he muttered. She struggled to find some better means of fighting him off from this new position, but had barely managed to orient herself before he was joining her on the bed. Careful to keep the hand holding her chain above her head, he pinned her arms roughly to the mattress. Try as she might, she wasn’t able to budge the prince off of her. He seemed to find her struggle amusing, however, and was soon kissing sloppy line down her throat. She could feel him relishing in her powerlessness.

Wait, _powerlessness?_ Elsa was winter incarnate! She would _freeze_ this fiend right through for doing this, manacles or no manacles! She just had to focus. Elsa closed her eyes and struggled to clamp down on her panic and her disgust at Hans’s weight on top of her. If she could just—

“It won’t work, you know.” She felt his body adjust as his free hand left her hip to reach up and flick the iron manacle. A deep, muffled _thunk_ sounded at the contact, and Elsa opened one eye wearily. “It’s beautiful, what you can do, Elsa. Truly, you are a magnificent creature.” His hand dropped down to her face, and with sickening gentleness, he traced the contour of her jaw with his thumb. “But someone figured out why you always wore gloves.”

His wolfish grin, combined with the utter failure of her attempts to escape made her suck in a shaky breath. The ludicrous softness of his sick lover’s gesture turned that breath into a strangled sob. He was right. She couldn't use her powers against him, not with the infernal manacles encasing her hands. Horror crept into her mind, settling over her painfully tense muscles and frantic heart. There was nothing she could do to stop him. She swallowed thickly and turned her face away. _Conceal_ _,_ she intoned.  _Don't feel._   _Don't feel. Don't feel._

In that moment, Hans knew he’d beaten the queen of Arendelle. And he celebrated his victory by slipping his hand down the length of her beautiful, trembling body and into the seam of her dress. Tears gathered in the queen’s gorgeous azure eyes, and when one spilled down her cheek, the far too-long-underestimated prince of the Southern Isles stopped its trail with his greedy tongue.


	2. Let It Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, I borrowed a bit from Hans's speech to Anna after he reveals his real motives.

Elsa felt weary, and so very much older than her 21 years as she lay trapped beneath the lascivious prince, doing her best to control the glacial avalanche of emotions roiling throughout her heart. If she could just close the door on what was happening, if she could step outside it, then it would be over and she could be rid of his roaming hand and sloppy kisses. Try as she might, though, her chest ached with the sharpness of one desperate question, and she simply couldn’t clear it from her mind.

“Why?”

Hans’s hand stilled for a moment in their quest to inch her gown up over her thighs. He gazed in obvious appreciation at the creamy, newly-revealed skin there a second longer before tearing away his smoldering eyes to rest on Elsa’s face. “Why what, your majesty?”

“Why are you doing this?” She took a deep, shaky breath, deeply relieved that his hot hand had come to rest on her hip as she spoke, even if the thumb was digging a circle like a brand into her cool flesh. “What are you even after?”

“Well, at the moment…” he murmured, his timbre dropping to something low and lustful as his pointer finger slipped suggestively below the waistband of her underwear. Even in her state of supreme anxiety, Elsa let out a short huff of impatience. The prince grinned roguishly, bowing his head as a gesture of indulgent compliance.

“Fate is a funny thing, my queen. You see, as thirteenth in line in my own kingdom, I didn’t stand a chance. I knew I’d have to marry into the throne somewhere. When news of your coronation reached the Southern Isles, it was only natural for me to charter a ship and attend the ceremony.” Hans arranged his body so that his face was only centimeters from Elsa’s. He was clearly enjoying relaying the story of his great deceit to his rather captive audience. The free hand at her waist rose to cup her left breast and Elsa squirmed at the hateful feeling. He licked his lips and continued.

“When I arrived, I have to admit, Elsa, that I was struck by your beauty. Even in your frostiness, you are a gorgeous creature. I wanted you immediately. You know,” he breathed, idly stroking her nipple through the smooth material of her dress as Elsa tried not to gag. “It was at your coronation, when you held up the sovereign’s orb and scepter and tried not to look so terrified, that I promised myself that I would have you just like this.”

Elsa shuddered as Hans lodged his leg between her knees, forcing her legs apart in an arrogant display of his power over her.

“But I had to bide my time, your majesty. You see, no one was getting anywhere with you. But _Anna_. Anna was so desperate for love, she was ready to marry me just like _that._ ”

Elsa, whose focus had been half on the story and half on trying to tune out the rasp of his fingers through the fabric of her dress, suddenly snapped to attention at the mention of her sister.

“I figured after we’d married, I’d have to stage a little accident for you… after I’d had a little fun with you first, of course.” He placed an open-mouthed kiss just above the neckline of Elsa’s sheer bodice. “But then you doomed yourself, and Anna was dumb enough to go after you.”

“Shut up.”

Elsa felt a slow, predatory leer spread across Hans’s lips where they were pressed against her skin. But she was too angry to fear his reaction to her bold command. She could feel her body shaking in agitation, the aches of the ice castle attack and the pains of her currently cramping arms fading into the background as her skin flushed warm with her anger.

“Why, Elsa? It’s all so perfect, really. Come now, you must admit that! You do realize that all that’s left is to kill you, right?” Hans was readjusting himself, retreating from her line of vision as he settled back between her thighs. He was losing interest in their talk, she could tell. “Once I kill you, I’ll become the rightful ruler of your kingdom. It’s all worked out _so_ perfectly.”

“If you kill me, the rightful ruler of Arendelle will be Anna,” Elsa countered furiously, though her heart froze at the thought of Anna anywhere near Hans, so much so that her skin felt uncomfortably hot. Still, she held onto her belief in her fiery sister. “And you are no match for Anna.”

Hans laughed heartily at that, and Elsa flinched at the sound of his belt buckle swinging free of its catch. She felt on fire. Or was the temperature actually dropping?

“Oh, Elsa. Didn’t you hear? Your sister left me in charge of Arendelle in her absence, in front of two dozen witnesses!”

Elsa’s inflating confidence guttered for a moment before returning in full force. “Anna _will_ return, Hans, and when she does—”

“And _if_ she does, she will return to _me_ , Elsa. Or do you forget that the event which caused you to flee Arendelle in the first place was our engagement? I am the hero who is going to save Arendelle from its destruction.” Hans’s breath fanned out in thicker steam than before as he tugged her underwear down her pale legs, and Elsa’s brief bravado burst like a soap bubble at the prospect of what he was about to do. This was it. Hans had won. She closed her eyes, horribly resigned, and focused on not feeling.

“And just think, your majesty,” Hans breathed near her ear, positioned above her and ready to claim his prize. “Once you’re gone, I’ll have your pretty sister to entertain me for a while.”

Elsa’s eyes snapped open as her entire world narrowed into an insurmountable, frigid _rage_. She heard Hans yelp and felt him slide from the bed, from which tendrils of frost were curling magnificently around her body.

If her instinct to defend herself at the ice castle and from Hans were cold, the desire to protect Anna was _glacial_. She was suddenly clinically aware of every crack and crevice in the hastily-smelted iron on her wrists, no doubt commissioned with a turnaround time that disallowed quality, and willed each filled with punishing ice that expanded and shattered the heavy manacles like so much glass.

Her hands now free, the snow queen turned slowly to face her captor, who was nursing a hand that she knew to suddenly be as frostbitten as if he had spent days in the blizzard outside. She appraised the villainous prince coldly as spiky rime bloomed across the rafters of the cell. Her mind was conjuring nauseating images of the past hour, but instead of herself, she pictured _Anna_ , her Anna under his foul lips and his disgusting body, and Elsa knew she was rapidly spiraling into a black rage the likes of which she hadn’t even known she was capable.

“Twice,” she ground out in a chilling whisper that betrayed the murder in her heart.

Hans backed away on the defensive, hastening to dress himself. Elsa received a savage pleasure in the way his thin veneer of control had slipped for a moment before he drew his sword. “What?”

“Twice you called me a ‘creature,’ Hans. And maybe that’s true, and I’m something not entirely human.” Her face twisted into an elegant snarl that certainly felt inhuman to her. “But _Anna_ is…” _everything_ , she thought. “Anna is a thousand times more human than you could ever hope to be.”

Elsa extended her hand, palm up and fingers outstretched. Hoarfrost curved in thick arcs from the support beams above, criss-crossing powerfully into the mortar of the bricks, and there was a low whine from the pressure of expanding water. Hans lunged for her just as Elsa closed her fist, and the rafters crashed down, bringing the ceiling with them. The prince was buried in a heap of rubble as Elsa easily cleaved a chunk from the wall.

The queen stepped lightly through her impromptu exit and into the raging storm she’d conjured, and met the hissing blizzard like a dear friend. Something inside her relished the glorious power she’d just demonstrated, and the delight she garnered from her very close escape soothed the horror of the past hour with Hans. There were tears of relief in her eyes. She was Elsa. She was the snow queen. She was _free_. And turning into the wind, she felt the tears freeze on her cheeks and fall away. _Let it go,_ she thought, smiling grimly, before setting out at a fierce pace to find her sister.

 

***

When Hans finally shouldered his way out of the rubble half an hour later, he was met with the eerie whistle of fierce wind from a hole blasted through the prison wall. He grunted in irritation before reaching back into the pile for his sword. He scowled and stalked forward like an angry cat denied the canary—the very sexy, very _maddening_ canary.

Just before he stepped through the hole, three soldiers barreled into the cell, clearly having wrestled for some time with a door that had been frozen on its hinges. Hans didn’t turn around

“Prince Hans!” shouted the first one over the threshold. “Princess Anna has just returned to the castle!”

“She’s obviously troubled,” reported the next. “But she keeps repeating that her heart has been frozen, and that she must see you at once.”

Hans’s feral smile darkened into something half-mad as he gazed out at the snow. Elsa had no doubt gone out in search of her sister, who, as luck would have it, was back in his hands. Back in his hands, and with a frozen heart. It really was too perfect.

“Very good, gentlemen. Lead the way.” He turned briskly, adopting a careful mask of anxious concern, before trotting along behind them.

He’d need to make this much quicker than he might otherwise. For all that he’d delight in bringing Anna down to a cell much like this one and taking his time, he had a queen to catch and a kingdom to steal.

He’d be the king of Arendelle before sundown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I've redeemed myself for putting Elsa in such a grim situation last chapter! She really is such a wonderful character, and I couldn't stand to let anything else happen to her.
> 
> Obviously leaning more Elsanna here... Sigh. This ship! I can't fight it!


	3. Infinitely Better

“Anna! Where are you? Anna!”  Elsa shouted into the punishing storm, trying desperately to reign in her rising panic. Even for an ice sorceress whose body barely registered the cold, the blizzard was harsh. The queen found herself gritting her teeth against the wild ferocity of the wintry wind. Though she was doing her best to influence its fierce trajectory with her power—cleaving the frigid gale in two so that it afforded her moderately easier passage—her focus was waning with each passing minute.

Time, after all, was Elsa’s real tormentor. For each moment longer that Anna spent in these conditions put the princess in greater danger. No, the snow queen of Arendelle wasn’t affected by the freezing weather, but the thought of her sister coming to any harm because of a storm Elsa had unleashed chilled her heart in ways quite unrelated to the raging storm.

The queen took another labored step forward, feeling the rasping vibrations of icy friction through her heal as it was forced back along the gravel-like snow beneath her. The wind was too loud for her to hear the squeal of ice on ice as her crystalline shoes grated backwards.

For the third time since escaping the prison cell half an hour previously, Elsa paused in her difficult trek and tried to clear her mind as her father had taught her so many years before. If she could just find a way to stop the storm. There _had_ to be a way! She thought of Hans and tried to recapture her cold fury from before, since it had given her the fortunate ability to shatter the iron she hadn’t believed she could.

A particularly harsh gust of icy air actually lifted the queen for a moment, and she spun out of the blast, losing her direction entirely and tilting dangerously on her heels and back onto the ground. It was hopeless. Everything that had happened since her carefully-guarded emotions had spun out of control two days prior – had it really only been two days?!—had only served to leave her fragmented emotional control blisteringly raw and unmanageable. She thought longingly of the temporary freedom of the ice castle, then with disgust about Hans and his hateful advances, and then she felt shame at the thought of having killed him in a fit of rage that was swiftly buffeted by fierce fury at his threat toward Anna. And looming over it all was the acute terror that her sister was in danger.

Elsa resumed her painstaking progress forward, lifting her arm to block some of the flurries from her face and staring wide-eyed around her. It was no use. Her world had been reduced to a chaos of swirling white and clashing shadows, and the ever-keening howl of the glacial wind.

“Anna!” Her throat ached. “Please, Anna! Can you hear me?”

A great dark figure loomed before her, and with a jolt, Elsa realized that it was a ship. She’d managed to wander onto the frozen fjord in her snowblindness. Could Anna be here somewhere? Elsa prayed that she wasn’t, that the unnamed ice harvester who had accompanied her sister to the frozen castle had entreated upon Anna to seek shelter.

_I’ll name him the official Arendelle Ice Master and Deliverer or something if he’ll only have managed to keep her safe_ , she promised grimly.

“Anna! Anna!” Elsa was spinning around again, half-mad now with panic.

“Elsa!” The muffled answer at first filled Elsa with a powerful relief before she recognized the speaker. She flinched so violently that she nearly toppled back into the wind as the figure of Hans lurched from the flurry behind her. As soon as he saw her shivering form, the prince’s face lit in a leer. “You can’t run from me,” he announced, malice dripping from his triumphant voice as he lumbered toward her. His body was heavier, and resisted the snow far easier than did her own. He was behind her before she even had a chance to decide in which direction to run.

The power she’d stolen back from Hans in her escape abandoned her, and she shivered with a deep, primal terror. All at once she felt fractured by his assault in the cell in a way she hadn’t yet had time to process, and was steadily losing herself to the resulting fear. Hans was going to recapture her, force her back into manacles, an improved set no doubt, and he was going to finish what he started. And when he was done with Elsa, he’d move on to…

_Anna_.

Her crippling dismay warped into something unrecognizable, like a snake rearing back before the strike. Elsa felt _lethal_. So she hadn’t killed Hans at their last encounter. In fact she had even regretted the action later, knowing that her father would have disapproved of Elsa taking justice into her own hands. But now the threat this vermin posed to Anna was multiplied. What if he found her before Elsa could? The queen appraised her attacker coldly.

“I won’t let you near my sister.”

It was a very, very deadly promise balanced on the edge of a razor.

 “Your sister?” Hans gave a deep, savage laugh that filled Elsa with a sense of intense dread. “She returned from the mountain weak and cold. She said that _you_ froze her heart.”

Elsa’s eyes widened in shock. All of the air _whooshed_ out of her lungs, hunching her over for a moment as she struggled to breathe a single denial:

“No…”

“I tried to save her,” he assured the queen in a mocking voice that told her that he had done no such thing. “But it was too late. Her skin was ice. Her hair turned white.”

All of the feelings that Elsa had so recently unleashed, the Pandora’s box of dizzying highs and dismal lows, were constricting to a single point of force just between herself and Hans. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the prince. The pressure was building to a frightening head, and Elsa could feel herself teetering on the edge of the cataclysmic tightrope forged between herself and her enemy.

“Your sister is dead… because of you!”

The devastating force between Hans and Elsa snapped like a taught bowstring, shooting a bolt of ice straight into the queen’s heart. It was _aching_ , splitting into jagged pieces…

“No…”

_Anna._ She felt the tiny pressure of her baby sister’s little fist around her finger on the day she was born.

Elsa staggered backwards, curling into herself and away from Hans as her knees buckled and she felt the little child’s ankles locked around her waist for a hundred games of horsie around their father’s study.

Her hands flew to her face, and she was thirteen and watching Anna’s fiery braid flash in the sun outside her window, heartache an ungreased bit in her mouth as she gazed for the thousandth time at the door she had to keep locked to protect her precious sister.

A thousand images of Anna played before her eyes: lovingly preserved memories of their childhood together and then fleeting and cherished glimpses of the girl from the shadows in their time apart.

She’d sacrificed thirteen years of her life to the four walls and the permanently locked door of her bedroom, and it still hadn’t been enough. She’d done the unthinkable, and hurt, no—she swallowed thickly— _killed_ the only person she loved.

She brought her hand to her mouth and screamed her pain into it. All those years she’d kept the door closed between them were threatening to swallow Elsa like the waves that had swallowed their parents. She’d thought she was alone before when she’d kept the doors locked, but now her very soul was mutilated by Anna’s absence.

A ragged sob tore itself like a rabid animal from the cage of Elsa’s ribs, and the weight of her pain imploded before tearing outward with a sound like a colossal wind forced through a wide cavern. Time stopped and the storm collapsed around her, and even the snowflakes stopped falling and she was alone because she was a _monster_ just like the duke had said she was and Anna was _gone_ and the place that she was supposed to be in Elsa’s _soul_ was in _agony._

Without Anna, Elsa was a shadow of her once elegantly poised, aloof self. The whirlwind of memories and feverish, half-formed thoughts pressed her into the ice below. Could she fall into it? Could she will herself to become in death the ice that had consumed her life and that of her sister? Could she be with Anna if her heart were made of ice, too? A frantic animal whine started low in her chest. No, that wouldn’t work; her heart was already frozen. There must be another—

Somewhere behind her, a gentle _shink_ of metal on metal announced the drawing of a sword. Elsa’s lips pulled into a grimacing smile and she didn’t bother turning around.

_Yes_ , she thought, as she heard the _whoosh_ of air around Hans’s practice swings. This was infinitely better.

From far away, Elsa thought she heard Anna’s voice calling her name, and knew that this was the best choice if even preparing for it allowed her to hear her sister.

_My Anna, please forgive me. I’m coming_. Elsa closed her eyes.

“NOOOOO!”


	4. Love Will Thaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our story concludes here!

Elsa heard the shout, but paid it no heed. It echoed around her and through her and around her again, bouncing off the vast emptiness of the fjord’s frozen surface to vibrate on some primal level of what was left of her mind. _No._ _No. No. Anna, what did I do to you? No. NO!_ The pressure of it was taking her over, the grief surging into her bones until she thought she would—

Something shattered, and Elsa wasn’t sure if it was inside or outside her anymore. Where was the sword? Why wasn’t she with Anna yet? Why hadn’t Hans released her damned soul so she could seek out her sister?

The answer was inanely obvious, and Elsa shivered as her mind unfolded it. Whatever chased after Anna when Hans’s sword ended her, it wouldn’t be a soul. Anna _was_ her soul. Without her sister, she was nothing but a simulacrum of a human being, a cold copy, an icy skeleton that concealed only a void where her heart should be, where _Anna_ should be. She was a room locked up tight and hiding a dangerous secret. That was all. She’d be lucky if she ever saw Anna again, for surely someone like her sister did not go to the same place in death that Elsa would. She sighed, sinking even further into herself.

Where was the sword?

Elsa turned miserably to see what was keeping Hans. If he was losing his nerve, then she would do it herself. Anything to escape the sheer agony of losing her reason to live. Anything to destroy the _creature_ that had robbed the world of such light and warmth as Anna had offered it.

The first thing Elsa saw were frozen fingers fanned out protectively over her shoulder.

What—?

Her eyes trailed up to trace the gleaming palm, the delicately-frosted wrist. The thick tentacles of Elsa’s grief stilled momentarily in the face of confusion. The arm was so smooth that it couldn’t have been carved. The figure was of a deep cerulean ice that only allowed the barest snatches of light through the fabric of a cloak thrown back by some force and frozen mid-ripple. Its left arm was still poised as if to shield Elsa, and its right was raised defensively against some threat. The instant Elsa recognized the face, she forgot how to breathe.

“Anna!”

She was on her feet before she’d even registered what had happened, lurching toward her sister’s still form rendered entirely of ice. Her hands flew to her mouth, eyes wide with horror. What could she do? What could she do?

“Anna…” One hand stretched out uselessly, flinched, reached again. She shook her head minutely as her other hand rose to join the first in cradling Anna’s face. “No.”

Her breath stuttered as her fingers instinctively flew to brush away a tear on Anna’s cheek. “Please, no…” Now both hands rose, shaking, to cup her sister’s face.

For a long moment, she just stared in horror, pleading with the ice beneath her hands to yield a gentle heartbeat, a flush of warmth, anything.

It was one thing to hear of what she had done. It was another entirely to witness her handiwork in person. Tears hazed her vision and her lips parted in a silent plea.

She was right. Anna was her soul. And right now, her soul stared back at her with teary eyes so vacant that it was an affront to nature. Elsa thought of Anna’s infectious laugh, her inherent warmth, and her breath hitched. Her soul was ice, now, as she had always suspected it was. Her soul was Anna and her soul was ice.

She thought absurdly of the stupid prophesy. As a child, she’d wondered logically how this supposed foretold ruler could be alive with a heart that was ice. How did it beat? How did it love people? She knew now. It didn’t. _This_ is what it meant to have a frozen heart.

The sincerity with which Elsa tried to freeze the rest of herself in this instant was all-consuming. She should die, absolutely she should die, here, staring into the eyes of the person she loved with all of her heart. Nothing happened. She couldn’t even end herself. In anguish, the only thing Elsa could think to do was ironically, _cruelly_ , the thing she’d wanted more than anything in the entire world in the years spent locked in her room avoiding her sister.

She threw herself into her sister’s cold, unresponsive arms and wept.

Great heaving sobs rent her entire body as she cried. Her tears were for Anna, for everything she’d taken from her. Anna had only ever wanted her sister, and Elsa had denied her that. It didn’t matter any more that she had done it to protect Anna. She thought of all of the times Anna had lingered on the other side of Elsa’s door, at first trying valiantly to hide the sounds of her crying under timid coughs and muffled sniffles. She thought of the times when Anna grew desperate and sobbed into the chilly space under the doorjamb or into the empty hollow of the keyhole, begging Elsa to come out, begging her to love her again.

_I loved you all along_ , Elsa wailed inside her mind. _I never stopped. Anna, please, I’m so sorry…_

No, Elsa realized. This is what it felt like to have a _broken_ heart. She thought of all the times Anna had cried on the other side of her door, and swore resolutely that she wouldn’t move from her sister’s frozen embrace until she had shed a thousand times the tears Anna had cried for her when she didn’t even deserve them.

At this point, she was well on her way. The girl whimpered through her tears, her heaving sobs setting a tempo for the apologies she could never offer Anna now. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

For just an instant, Elsa thought her sister’s cold arm twitched under her hands, and the weight of such an agonizingly impossible thought made her stagger forward.

It took her far too long to realize that she hadn’t been the one who staggered… Her eyes flew open, and though she could barely see through her tears, she could still make out the contrast of brilliant purple against the white snowdrifts beyond her vision. Could it be..?

Elsa hiccupped as her eyes traveled once again up the length of her sister’s arm. It was too much to hope for. Right?

“Anna..?”

A dazzling smile flew to her lips at the sight of her sister’s beautiful face, confused, pleased, sheepish _alive_. She had to force her hands to relax their hold on Anna’s _warm_ arms when she realized that her own fingers were digging sharply into the material.

Something between a gasp of astonishment, a choked sob, and a wild laugh tore itself from Elsa’s lips as she threw her arms around her sister, and she couldn’t help the second one when she felt Anna return her embrace. There was a steady warmth easing the nightmare of sorrow from her chest, overflowing around the edges of her being at the delightful, wonderful, _perfect_ feeling of her sister safe in her arms. Anna said her name softly, reassuringly, and Elsa smiled so widely that her cheeks hurt and she felt likely to cry all over again with the gravity of the feeling.

Her hands found Anna’s, and the warmth steadied in her, responding to the gentle pressure of Anna’s fingers.

“You sacrificed yourself for me?” Delight battled with sadness and won, making the sentence sound more shy than regretful of Anna’s decision.

Anna’s eyes drifted closed, and a small smile tugged her lips upward in a delicate arc. Her eyes opened again and Elsa felt lost in the welcoming depths of teal. “I love you.” The jagged edges of Elsa’s grief disappeared completely, thawed by the insurmountable radiance of these three words.

Somewhere in Elsa’s periphery (which at the moment was anything that wasn’t her beautiful sister), Olaf gasped. “An act of true love,” he whispered reverently, “will thaw a frozen heart.”

His realization was enough to call Elsa’s cognitive powers back to her, and she gazed at the little snowman, considering. Suddenly, she had the answer she’d been looking for all along. She turned eagerly back to Anna.

“Love will thaw,” she murmured. “Of _course._ ” Elsa’s hands rose from her sides and she stared expectantly at her palms, a grin pulling itself from her lips.

“Elsa?”

“ _Love._ ”

A soft glow filled the ice beneath their feet, and Elsa delighted in Anna’s pleased gasp as a submerged ship rose through the rapidly-melting water to rest beneath their feet. It pleased her that her sister approved, because it was this deep, brilliant warmth that Anna evoked in her that inspired Elsa’s actions. Around them, the snow that had accumulated on the fjord’s surface rose in reversed flurries that met with greater, cascading spirals churning around one focal point in the brilliant blue sky over Arendelle. Elsa lifted her arms, the delighted composer of this desperately yearned-for song, and guided the twisting ice into a massive, refined snowflake over the turrets of the castle. She brought her hands together when the snowflake had reached its capacity, and then apart again, banishing it in a sparkling, wintry eruption.

Elsa watched the spot where it had disappeared for a moment longer, and felt a bones-deep sense of relief. For thirteen years, she’d locked herself away, obsessing desperately over the question of how to thaw the ice once she’d conjured it, knowing that once she solved the mystery, she could have her sister back.

She’d finally done it. And as if by way of some cosmic congratulations, Anna’s eyes caught hers again and her small hand lit on Elsa’s shoulder before settling to curl just above her elbow. Elsa felt whole at the contact for the first time in thirteen years.

“Hands down, this is the best day of my life,” Olaf announced. Elsa’s eyes caught the sag in his cheeks, and the trail of one twiggy arm as it clattered to the deck below. “And quite possibly the last,” he admitted, his entire body deflating, though his silly, childish smile never wavered.

“Oh, Olaf! Hang on, little guy.” Elsa flicked her wrist, sending her power in a looping arc over to his drooping form and reassembling him with a thought. She smiled inwardly at the way Anna’s eyes lit up at this display of her powers. _Did I ever imagine that I could be_ proud _of my magic?_ she wondered. Olaf gulped excitedly and danced beneath the flurry Elsa conjured for him, giggling madly.

Anna joined him with a chuckle of her own before staring into Elsa’s eyes. The feeling she could only describe as Anna-warmth swelled inside her at the awe she saw in her sister’s expression.

The moment was, of course, interrupted by Hans.

He grunted from further along the deck, scrabbling along the rail to get his feet under him. Outwardly, Elsa scowled. Inwardly, she felt the stirrings of the terror she’d felt of him before, slightly muffled beside the radiance of having Anna back. But it was there, and its growing intensity made Elsa nervous. What was wrong with her?

Before she could ponder this further, the ice man who had helped Anna seemed to grow an impossible extra six inches. Elsa watched, fascinated, as his shoulders pulled forward almost menacingly and his head bowed before taking a furious step toward Hans.

Elsa did not know who this ice man was, but she felt an immediate affection for him that was only partially due to gratitude. He must be protecting Anna. Elsa attributed the faint stirring of insecurity she felt at that thought as a holdover of her anxiety about Hans.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah!” Anna tutted, and flew toward the ice man before Elsa could pull her back and away from Hans. The redhead placed a reassuring hand on his chest. Elsa’s eyes caught the movement and she felt a slight frown crease her features.

Anna straightened herself to her full height, much as Elsa remembered their mother doing when the need for monarchial authority arose, and advanced on Hans.

Elsa felt nausea at her sister’s proximity to the swine, but realized that as his former… her mind skipped over the word “fiancé”… Anna had a right to upbraid the prince for his actions. Nevertheless, her fear retreating to the background in the face of Anna’s safety, Elsa kept her magic coiled into a defensive state just below the surface of her control. If he so much as _breathed_ on Anna—she shuddered at the flash of a memory of hot breath on her neck before roughly forcing it away—she’d gladly freeze him solid and ship him back to the Southern Isles in an icebox.

“Anna?” the prince muttered in surprise, straightening and taking a step toward Anna. A feral fury was rising in Elsa, but so was a sickening fear. She flexed her wrists in an absent effort to remind herself that they weren’t restrained, that she was free to defend herself and Anna now. But she had to reign in her powers or she would likely kill him where he stood.

Part of her, the part that remembered the scorching heat of his hand pushing at her her thighs, was sorely tempted.

“… But… she froze your heart!”

Anna’s back was ramrod straight, and her head tilted back regally. “The only frozen heart around here is yours.”

With that, the younger girl turned on her heels and started back toward Elsa, Olaf, the ice man, and his reindeer. Elsa could make out her narrowed eyes.

She seemed to change her mind mid-step, however, and her body whirled back toward Hans, one hand reaching to grasp his collar and the other drawing back in a lightning-quick motion before snapping forward into his jaw. The momentum sent him reeling over the railing in a clumsy flip that smacked him roughly into the water below with a surprised yelp.

Anna made her way smugly back to her party, gingerly extending her hands to meet Elsa’s with a slow smile. Elsa took them, and the two found each other’s embrace again. Elsa gathered her sister close, closer perhaps than was strictly necessary, and buried her face into the crook of Anna’s neck. Her hair smelled like honeysuckle. Elsa inhaled the scent reverently, trying to conceal her trembling and to dispel the lingering terror crackling just under her newfound control.

The encounter with Hans had shaken something loose in Elsa. She supposed the hope forming in the back of her mind had been that she would just forget it in time. But seeing him now had confirmed that this would not be the case. Her hands shook with the weight of what he had almost done to her, and what he had managed to do. She sighed, and supposed she would need to face this new challenge at some point.

But she wouldn’t have to do it alone.

Elsa smiled into her Anna’s shoulder. No, she had her soul back, and her frozen heart was thawed. She would need to process what Hans had done, and she would need to deal with it before she could feel safe again.

For now, however, she had her sister’s warm embrace. And that was more than enough.

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this fic! Thank you so much to everyone who commented... It means so much to me! And I apologize profusely for the delay in finishing it. School, you know.
> 
> I'm toying with the idea of picking up this story in a separate fic that would be all post-movie. If I do, it will be less subtly Elsanna, and will focus on Elsa's healing from her encounter with Hans, as well as the reconciling of Elsa and Anna. I've left it so that if I do decide to continue the story, Elsanna-haters can leave it here and pretend that anything that comes next doesn't happen. :P
> 
> Again, thank y'all so much! It's been fun!

**Author's Note:**

> This may end up being Elsanna. I haven't actually decided yet. I'm still coming to terms with my desire to ship these two, heh. This is also my first fic, so please let me know what I'm doing well and not so well!


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